Shop-Made Shims

You had a woodworking shop. Why would you not make your own wood shims. Shims are a generally useful thing to have around. Certainly. If you're ever installing cabinets, you need shims to install them. And even just in general in the shop, I find I'm using the all the time. If you saw the video when Jimmy Dre was here, he was using these as a sanding block to get into really tight spots. So lots of applications for them and you can very easily make them yourself. You just need this little slut. Here's the deal with making your slut. Three quarter inch plywood works well for this. You need to cut it to a width that you can easily remember. I made this 10 inches wide and it's also then 12 inches long. The layout that we need in order to be able to make a sh is on this bottom corner. I'm measuring over 5/16 of an inch mega mark from that same bottom corner. I'm measuring up nine inches, make a mark 5/16 over nine inches up. Connect the dots. We need to cut that angle away. That's what creates the angle. The taper in the shims. When we start cutting, I'm gonna go do that on the band saw. Then I'll come right back and I'll show you what else you need to do in order to finish this baby up after you've cut this. Now, keep in mind we're not making fine furniture here. We're making a jig for cutting shims. You don't have to go crazy sending your band saw marks off. But you do want this to be a straight line. So I gave that just a little kiss on my belt sander to knock those marks off. Then what you need to do is glue a foot on here. That's another piece of three quarter inch plywood. Then you need to glue a handle on here. So this needs to angle a little bit toward the fence like this one. And I find that's a good, easy way to keep pressure going toward the riff fence as you're using the jig. Now, there are some parameters that then when you come to the saw, it's gonna be best if you remind yourself of. So I'm gonna write on here. So at 10 inches because that's this width blanks nine inches long. So that way, every time you grab the jig, you've got a constant reminder there of what you need to do in order to use the taper gut. So again, let's walk through this little bit of assembly, you're gonna glue a foot on the base that catches the sham, you're gonna glue a handle on. It doesn't have to be a beautiful sped maple, but it could be, you're gonna glue a handle on with a little bit of an angle in this direction that helps keep that nice and tight to the rip fence. You're gonna cut your blanks at nine inches. So just like you saw, we're gonna very easily be able to make shims. Now, part of the deal with using this is watch for the flip. I'm gonna grab a fresh piece of this so that I have a nice wide one. So watch, I'm gonna rip flip, rip, flip, rip flip. Wait, the wider the chunk is you're starting with. The more efficient this will be, I don't want to keep going with this piece now because it's just getting too narrow for me to be comfortable handling that. So starting with a two by eight, even a two by 10, 2 by 12, that's going to give you like a year supply probably of shims for your shop. Simple jig, very handy to have and a great way to make sure that you're never shim free in your shop.